Psion Omega (Psion series Book 5)

by Jacob Gowans

  Sammy listened to the sounds of his friends battling under heavy fire until a body crashed into the bed frame which slammed into his head.

  Next thing Sammy knew he was stalking through a black forest, a long key in hand, his feet wet and cold. Gold and silver adorned the key, giving it a heavy, solid feel. To the right was a large, crystal lake. Moonlight sparkled like glittering diamonds off the water’s surface. Bobbing on the surface was a raft, chained to a pole jammed deep into the soggy lakeside ground. To the left was the cave.

  Sammy walked to the cave’s mouth where a dank smell greeted him, carrying a hint of something fouler, more menacing. The blackness in the cave pulsed and pulled even stronger than the shadow-Sammy had, as though the darkness was a magnificent living thing—breathing, heaving, and wanting.

  Go inside. The voice was the same as before. The same he’d heard so many times, urging him to unleash the anomaly and become more powerful and invulnerable to pain and fear. It’s the only way.

  A body collapsed next to Sammy. He jerked awake, opened his eyes, and stared into the blank face of a dead Dark agent, a tall black man with a hole in the middle of his forehead. Across the room he saw the green and pink haired girl laying on the floor, still knocked out from the punch he’d delivered her. Only two Psion Dark agents remained. Plus the six Ultras on the cruiser. Two guns lay near him. How fast could he move with his wound? How many could he take out?

  You’ll be so much faster if you—

  SHUT UP, Sammy told the voice.

  “Our Elite pilots are detecting incoming cruisers on radar,” Kawai reported. “Five minutes before they’re on the scene.”

  More shots were fired. Sammy heard a giant THUD as someone crashed into the wall, shaking the floor. He couldn’t tell who. Moments later, the rest of his team appeared around him, shielding for him while Kawai applied orange goo, an antibiotic, and anesthesia to Sammy’s bullet wounds. Sammy grimaced at the pain until the anesthesia kicked in.

  “You okay?” Jeffie asked. Her face was pale and sweaty, but she forced a smile for Sammy, which he appreciated.

  “Clock is ticking,” Kawai said as the Ultra Darks continued to fire at the team’s shields. “Four minutes.”

  “I have a grenade,” Anna said. She removed the device from her pack and showed it to them like it was a show-and-tell surprise. “Class II sticky. It’ll take that bird down.”

  “Those are Ultras,” Byron said, “they will shoot your grenade out of the air before it makes it outside the hotel room.”

  “Not if I personally deliver the package.”

  “That’s suicide,” Jeffie said.

  Anna breathed deeply and held it in. “No, it’s not.”

  “Let me do it,” Byron insisted. “I’m only half a Psion, anyway, Anna. You’ve got a life ahead of you.”

  Anna shook her head. For a moment she looked like she was about to cry, but that tough honcho expression returned and her eyes hardened. “Without jump blasts, you wouldn’t cross the distance, Commander,” she told Byron. “No offense.”

  She crouched and shielded. Sammy knew there was nothing else to say. No time for other options. “Tell Justice I said, ‘See ya.’ Now cover me.”

  The four remaining Psions used one hand to blast while firing their weapons with the other. The Ultra Darks dropped to the cruiser to make themselves as small a target as possible while still firing on Anna. Anna ran to the edge of the building, shielding herself. Jeffie shot one of the Ultras in the head. Byron hit another, leaving four. The cruiser reacted by trying to rise higher in the air, but it was too slow.

  Anna barely caught hold of the cruiser’s cockpit window with one hand. With the other, she slapped the sticky grenade onto the glass, then showed the pilot her middle finger. The Ultras shot down at her as she clung on, shielding herself with one hand raised above her head. Sammy managed to hit one of the Ultras in the leg, giving Anna a narrow window of opportunity.

  She pulled herself up until her feet were flat against the cruiser’s hull and blasted herself away. Two seconds later, the sticky detonated. The explosion propelled Anna back in the hotel room, where she rolled end over end into the mattress, her clothes singed, her flesh and hair seared. Jeffie reached her first. “She needs a burn kit.”

  “I thought you were dead,” Kawai told Anna. “That was brilliant.”

  Despite what must have been certain agony, Anna managed a snort. Sammy detected a trace of disappointment there. “I said tell Justice, ‘See ya.’ Not goodbye.”

  Sammy laughed. “You’re right. Our mistake. Let’s call our cruiser and get out of here. We’ve got about three minutes left.”

  The Psions worked quickly to help Vitoria and Anna onto the stealth cruiser. Vitoria thrashed and struggled but Sammy had bound her well. With a little over a minute to spare, they jetted away from downtown Mexico City toward Glasgow.

  * * * * *

  “You told us the plan was foolproof,” Julia Navarre, President Newberry’s Chief of Staff, said. She looked older than the last time the Council had met. “Why are we seeing mistake after mistake?”

  “I never said foolproof,” the Queen, disguised as the fox, said.

  “The President is concerned.”

  “The President should never be concerned. It’s not his job to be concerned.”

  “He is the leader of the world.”

  Holding back a laugh, the Queen responded, “He does not sit on the Council.”

  “I, too, am concerned,” the VP of Comcorp said. “And I do sit on the Council. The resistance was supposed to be snuffed out within a week. You told us if we allowed the insurgents to capture a Dark agent, we could use the agent as a tracking device. What went wrong?”

  “Insufficient data,” the Queen explained. “We did not know the resistance knew about the solution. The plan was to send in one team when she activated her distress signal, but use this team as an acceptable loss. The ploy was to make the enemy think they had gotten away with something valuable. As soon as the solution was deactivated in the agent, we sent in a second team to prevent their escape. Unfortunately, we underestimated the resistance and our agents were overpowered. The resistance escaped in a stealth cruiser before they could be traced. We must now assume there is nothing they do not know.”

  “How?” a Council member asked.

  “That is not important.”

  “Many of us disagree—”

  “I think what I am sensing here are the early symptoms of panic,” the Queen stated firmly. “This bothers me more than any intelligence the resistance might have uncovered.”

  “Since the attack on the weapons cache near Colorado Springs, we have witnessed problem after problem,” Navarre said. “I’m beginning to question your ability to navigate us through this situation.”

  The Queen saw several heads nod. Almost half of them. “Let me open your eyes. The resistance may have deactivated the solution inside the Dark agent, but it doesn’t change the fact that we now have a capable, well-trained, and loyal agent placed in the resistance base. I advise you to watch and wait. The plan will work.”

  “This report says the Dark agents had the advantage of surprise and greater numbers yet they lost to NWG-trained Psions,” the VP of Comcorp said. “What does this say about the S.H.I.E.L.D. and H.A.M.M.E.R. programs?”

  “Inexcusable failure,” the Queen reported. “Both programs are to be shut down and all participants erased, both staff and subjects. The facility will be converted into a Thirteen cell for acquiring and training new recruits. New Anomalies Eleven, Fourteen, and Fifteen will be interrogated and executed without exception.”

  14. Repairs

  Friday, August 15, 2087

  THE PENTHOUSE WAS a tomb except for the fox’s beating heart and soft breathing. Katie was gone and wouldn’t return for two or three days, if his guess was correct. This was the fox’s moment. He’d toiled for months preparing for today, a day where he had plenty of uninterrupted time. He cleared his thro
at and spoke to the ceiling.

  “Computer, activate in Private Mode.”

  “Computer activated. Private Mode enabled.”

  Those words alone sent a surge of bliss through the fox. Finally. He had spent countless hours muttering to the computer, using only his voice to build this program while Katie was away. More than once he’d mistaken the quiet for her absence and she’d heard him talking, but she had never figured out what he was doing. If she had, he would be dead. Waiting to be sure she was gone so he could resume his work had been difficult, especially recently as his plan grew close to fruition.

  “Computer, enter code 413212 to access secure communications line.”

  “Code accepted. Communications line now secure.”

  The fox’s joy was real. It fell from his eyes down his face. He wanted to wipe away his tears, but couldn’t. So many things he could no longer do. He yearned to have a body restored. The indescribable horror he had experienced at the hand of Katie, watching his own limbs removed crudely—accompanied by such mind-bending pain—had changed him. It had opened his eyes to what he had become from years of removing himself from most of humanity and thinking himself a greater kind of being than his fellow man. It was a lesson for which he had not been prepared, but had changed his perspective in ways he knew he still didn’t fully grasp.

  “Call Jeffrey Markorian,” the fox said.

  Less than a minute later a man answered. “Hello?” Markorian answered. “Hello? Who is this?”

  The fox had not heard his friend’s voice in years, not since the Lark Montgomery incident in Mexico City that Markorian had helped the fox coordinate. Long ago, Markorian had been the fox’s go-to guy. He had always looked out for Markorian, even gotten him a well-placed position in the Continental Security Department. But distance had been duly maintained due to Jeffrey’s ties to the fox’s past.

  “It’s me,” the fox answered.

  There was a pause on the line before Markorian spoke again. “Newblood?” The word was a whisper. “Diego, is that you?”

  The fox had not been called by his first name in years. “I need help, Markorian. Immediately. Can you help me?”

  “Of—of course. Yes, of course.” Markorian stuttered as though he still wasn’t sure if what he was experiencing was real. “I—I—I swore to always help you. Remember? I swore to always be a friend.”

  “I know, Markorian. I need a friend now.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Orlando. The N tower penthouse. I need you to listen carefully and act quickly. I do not have an abundance of time.”

  * * * * *

  Saturday, August 16, 2087

  “You don’t have to come to all her sessions, Sammy,” Dr. Rosmir said. Sammy and Croz, the resistance’s resident shrink, were preparing to leave the infirmary for their next therapy session with Vitoria. “Croz can handle it. And some people are complaining that you’ve been missing committee meetings.”

  Croz was the tallest man Sammy had ever seen. A man in his forties, well over two meters tall, and as gentle as a newborn puppy. Croz also had experience dealing with traumatized children who’d suffered from severe parental abuse, including mental and emotional torture. Once and only once, he’d spoken to Sammy about some of the more disturbing cases he’d worked on. Sammy had listened for about two minutes before telling Croz he’d heard enough.

  “I’ll take a session with Croz and Vitoria any day over the leadership council,” Sammy said. “Nothing actually happens in leadership meetings. The subcommittees are where all the real action takes place. And … it’s Saturday, so we have no meetings.”

  “Oh, is that how it works?” Croz said in his deep voice. “I was invited to attend the leadership council once. Fell asleep. That did it for me. I told ‘em no thanks.”

  “Are we making any progress with Vitoria?” Sammy asked. “It’s been over two weeks and—”

  “Two weeks is a blink of the eye, Sammy,” Croz said, “when you’re talking about undoing months or years of brainwashing and conditioning.”

  “Our mission depends on her compliance. Is it even reasonable to hope she can be an asset? I mean, yeah, okay … I know it takes time. It took me a few weeks to really snap out of it—”

  “You’re trying to equate your experience in Rio with what Vitoria went through,” Rosmir said. “It’s not the same.”

  “Yeah, but I mean—”

  “It’s not the same,” Croz repeated.

  Sammy bit back an annoyed response and nodded.

  “You ready then?” Croz had a clipboard and a stack of papers all held together with paperclips.

  Dr. Rosmir stared at Croz’s mess of documents and notes, shaking his head. “Good grief, Croz, why don’t you just get a holo-tablet like everyone else?”

  Croz looked at his stack and laughed. “It works for me.”

  Croz and Sammy left the infirmary and took Sammy’s car, Lemon, through the underground road system to the small penitentiary on the opposite side of the base. They were almost there when the car stalled. Sammy groaned. “Again? I thought they fixed it.”

  “Didn’t you take it to the mechanic?”

  “Yeah,” Sammy complained. “It’s been behaving well for the last week.”

  “Speaking of behaving well,” Croz said now with a cautious voice, “how are things going with your issues we spoke about?”

  “Geez, Croz.” Sammy gave a half-hearted laugh. “That was forever ago.”

  “I know. Just curious.”

  “Fine. Been doing what you said, and it’s been fine.”

  Croz nodded. “So … it’s your car. You get out and push.”

  It took a minute to get the car running again and another ten to reach the penitentiary. Prior to Vitoria’s capture, the building had only been used sparingly as a place for resistance members to get dry after a drinking spell. Most of the resistance affectionately called it “The Pen.” Now that Vitoria had taken up occupancy, six resistance members were assigned guard duty, two at a time in eight-hour shifts.

  Her “cell” was a comfortable bedroom with bars. It had carpet, a mattress with sheets, and skylights to allow plenty of light. A stack of clothes had been provided for her, and a privacy screen behind which she changed. Sammy, Anna, and Justice had combed over the cell for four hours to ensure there was nothing inside she could use to escape or injure visitors.

  According to her guards, Vitoria still requested lots of books. Croz had asked her once if she had always been a voracious reader. Vitoria’s nonchalant response was that she had to do something to pass the time. She lay on her stomach, feet in the air, reading a copy of A Tale of Two Cities. She glanced at them for only a moment and turned her attention back to her book.

  “Hi, Vitoria,” Croz said in his usual, friendly tone. “Do you mind if we sit?”

  Vitoria wore a pair of denim shorts and a shirt she’d tailored herself by tearing the fabric: the shorts nearly showed off her lower butt, her shirt torn to look more like a loose tube top. It was obvious she was trying to maximize her sex appeal, but Sammy couldn’t understand why. She rolled from her stomach onto her backside, sitting in a lewd position. Sammy stirred uncomfortably in his chair and waited for Croz to start the session. Croz didn’t seem to notice as he sorted through his stack of papers. She caught Sammy’s eye and winked slyly, licking the corner of her lips slowly and meaningfully. Sammy stirred again and cleared his throat.

  “How is the book, Vitoria?” Croz finally asked, looking up from his papers.

  Vitoria glanced meaningfully over the top of her paperback and kept reading.

  “Excuse me … how is the book, Jane?”

  When Croz called her Jane, she shrugged. “Have you read it?”

  “I have. I’ve read all of Dickens.”

  “Then you have your own opinion on it. Why do you want mine?”

  Croz chuckled. “I’m trying to be polite … make conversation.”

  Vitoria spread her legs a little
more. “What do you really want?” Her voice had changed too, transforming from that of a haunted fifteen-year-girl to a sultry Lolita. She sounded thirty, not fifteen.

  “I just want to talk,” Croz said kindly. “Is that a problem?”

  “I bet you’d like to do more than talk, wouldn’t you?”

  “Just talk.”

  Vitoria closed her legs. “Nothing I can do about it, is there?”

  “If you and I have enough productive chats, I think your circumstances will change and you can do a lot to improve your situation. Is that what you want?”

  Vitoria held herself in a ball, face in her knees, eyes on the floor. For an instant she looked scared and small, even trembling slightly. Her dark hair curtained her face so Sammy could only see her golden brown eyes. He had seen this version of her too, but only in the briefest of moments, as though she was not quite able to maintain her façade of strength without occasionally allowing a glimpse into her true state of emotion.

  When Croz could see she wasn’t going to answer, he changed tactics. Sammy had seen him do this before. “Would you mind if I ask you some questions, Vitoria?”

  She didn’t answer to her real name, so Croz repeated the question, this time addressing her as Jane. In response she gave the slightest of shrugs.

  “If you could do anything with your life, what would it be?”

  Vitoria’s head raised up, and before Sammy saw her eyes behind her hair, he knew what she was going to say. “A stripper,” she declared. The scared girl was gone and the sultry vixen he’d met at his hotel room door had returned. The gold flakes in her eyes flashed and her mouth twisted in a smile so warm it gave Sammy chills. “Or maybe a whore. I’d love to get paid to lay on my back and just—”

  “Thank you for that descriptive answer,” Croz finished for her with a fleeting smile. “I know enough about prostitution that you can skip the details.”

  The rest of the session went much like the last question, Vitoria giving answers so obscene and explicit that Sammy’s guts twisted. Each time she spoke, she peppered her responses with small sexual signals, licking a lip, touching or brushing herself, giving Croz and Sammy glimpses of her nearly exposed body. When Croz and Sammy thanked her for her time and left, Sammy wondered if they’d gotten anywhere. Croz sighed when the door shut behind them.